Why Dead Island 2 May Be In Big Trouble

It looks like we won’t be seeing Dead Island 2 anytime soon, as developer/publisher Deep Silver has announced a split with the team at Yager Development.

Not a lot of details concerning the split have been announced by, according to the original report from Gameinformer, Deep Silver plans on handing the Dead Island 2 project off to another studio.

Deep Silver has released a statement concerning the matter, discussing the potential future of the zombie apocalypse game that was originally due out sometime this year.

“…Deep Silver has always been dedicated to delivering the sequel that Dead Island fans deserve,” reads the statement. “After careful consideration, today we announce the decision to part ways with development partner Yager.”

The statement goes on to reiterate the fact that Dead Island 2 isn’t, well, dead, saying “We will continue working towards bringing our vision of Dead Island 2 to life, and we will share further information at a later stage.”

Until then, at least we still have the Dead Island 2 trailer to keep us company, which was released during E3 2014 and actually turned out to be my favorite trailer of the show.

This is obviously bad news for folks who were really hoping to get their hands on Dead Island 2 sometime in the nearish future, but it’s also great news for those same fans. In my book, it’s always better when a developer takes their time, makes tough decisions and refuses to launch a game until they think it’s ready for prime time. There’s a chance that this is a death blow for the game, sure, but I’d rather take that chance than finally boot up Dead Island 2 and be supremely disappointed.

Still, this feels kind of shocking, considering that at least a portion of the game was playable over a year ago. I had some eyes-on time with Dead Island 2 during last year’s E3, boasting gameplay of a guy making his way through a ritzy neighborhood while the undead attacked. A few glitches popped up in this early build, sure, but it otherwise looked like a zombie shooter that was well on its way to becoming a reality.

That was then followed up by an E3 party hosted by Deep Silver that, again, put Dead Island 2 in the spotlight. From the game’s trailer running on repeat in the background to zombie-themed drinks and even hired actors shambling through the crowd as the walking dead, all signs pointed to this game being well on its way to completion in 2016.

All of that actually further strengthens my stance that Deep Silver is making a good call here. They were clearly putting a lot of steam behind promotion but if the game ain’t ready, it ain’t ready. Here’s hoping that it will be ready someday. Until then, we’ve got plenty of other games about killing zombie-folk to keep us occupied.